Lake Forest Academy strives to embody in its practices and to cultivate in its students excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.

Lake Forest Academy was founded in 1857 as a school for boys in the Presbyterian town of Lake Forest, Illinois. It opened with four students. The Young Ladies' Seminary at Ferry Hall, later simplified to Ferry Hall School, was founded in 1869. The schools proceeded with their separate missions of educating young men or young women until the early 1970's when the schools coordinated their efforts. Full merger of the schools to form the coeducational Lake Forest Academy-Ferry Hall School took place in 1974. Later, the school name became Lake Forest Academy.